


Sleeping on the Balcony After Class

by adequategatsby



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M, don't look at me
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-12
Updated: 2013-04-12
Packaged: 2017-12-08 05:53:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/757826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adequategatsby/pseuds/adequategatsby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An AH college AU in which Geoff takes the GI Bill after leaving the army and he somehow ends up as a PhD candidate in the Film Business Administration department at UT Austin. So, he ends up as a TA for a shitty, lower level video production class, and of course he has to be given, if possible, the two most annoying undergrads in the history of any university ever (seriously he’d make his coordinating professor sponsor a study but he’s not sure if juggling that and his thesis (on the growing impact of new media as it relates to the golden demographic) and his new girlfriend Griffon (who, good god, he’s not sure how he lucked into but he’s not going to question it) is the best idea in the world.) So, when the course’s final project (a short film in which students can do whatever they want (seriously, he doesn't care, “Just do it, but no more Twilight parodies.”)) rolls around, he makes them work together. Because if Michael and Gavin are going to keep driving him crazy, well, they might as well make each other’s lives hell too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

“Just so we’re clear, you have to make a ten minute short film. That’s it. The requirements are: it’s ten minutes, it’s a short film. You can go any way you want with it. Got it?” Geoff counted backwards in his head from ten. He got to eight before a hand shot up in the second row of the auditorium.

****

“Gavin, what could you possibly have a question about?”

****

“You see, well, I just. I’m not sure I understand what you’re asking for.”

****

Geoff didn’t get paid enough for this. He really didn’t.

****

“The title for the handout literally says ‘Ten-Minute Short Film’. That’s it. Those are the requirements.”

****

“But, Mr. Ramsey--.”

****

Geoff cut him off before the class turned into another episode of “Gavin Free Asks Questions for Thirty Minutes and Still Isn’t Satisfied.”

****

“Read the handout again and e-mail me any questions you have, Mr. Free. It’ll be easier for all of us.” Of course what he really meant was ‘it will be easier for me you ignore you’, but that was neither here nor there.

****

“The partner list is on the back of your handout. I expect you to meet with the person you’re working with this afternoon. E-mail me script rough drafts by Friday. Any other questions?”

****

He corrected himself, “Any other questions from people who aren’t Mr. Free?”

****

He paused just long enough to catch a defeated sigh come from somewhere in the second row.

****

“Great. I’ll send out a sign-up sheet to schedule one-on-one meetings next week. Remember, equipment rental is on the second floor and you’ll need a photo ID to check out.”

****

Students started packing up their things and shuffling out the doors at the back of the lecture hall. Geoff stuffed his school provided HP into his backpack, hoping to make it out of the class and back into his office before he was accosted by any disgruntled first years angry about his partner assignments.

****

Sure, he knew assigning partners in a college level course was pretty high up on the Professorial Douchebag Scale (something he he and his roommate Jack had developed when they were lowly undergrads). It ranked right up there between scheduling midterms on the last day before spring break and intentionally signing up for the last possible slot on the finals schedule, but honestly he couldn’t be bothered to give a damn. He had a thesis to work on and he didn’t have time to play peacemaker when friends who picked each other as partners inevitably ended up hating one another. He found out after his first semester as a TA that it was just easier to assign partners, when students didn’t know each other that well they tended to complain less.

****

Not to mention the fact that assigning partners had the added benefit of making it so that Geoff could take out his (admittedly petty) revenge on students who had given him grief all semester.

****

That was how Gavin Free and Michael Jones ended up as partners this year.

****

The two had been the bane of his fourth year as a TA. He could handle students who didn’t turn in work. Hell, he could even deal with kids who ripped videos off YouTube and tried to pass them off as their own, but Michael and Gavin had been a whole new brand of undergrad. It was like they’d been created in a secret fucking government lab to make VP105 the class from hell.

****

Gavin was a first year who felt the need to make everything more complicated than it had to be. The first day of class Gavin had begged Geoff to open up special office hours so he could show his “new favourite TA” the reel he’d been working on since he was eleven.

****

Geoff had to admit, it was impressive, but you could only watch so many clips shot into slow motion before your brain started to congeal.

****

Gavin was an international student, if you considered Oxfordshire international. Geoff didn’t because 1. they still spoke English over there (at least he was pretty sure that Gavin was speaking English most of the time) and 2. he knew of at least two KFCs in the University block alone. So, yeah, Gavin about as international as the house of pancakes.

****

To top it all off, Gavin was also insufferable in a way that most first years never managed to reach. Geoff would almost have been impressed by it if he hadn’t be the one dealing with Gavin ever day.

****

Michael was a second year CS major who made it painfully clear that he didn’t want to be in a video production class at all. Geoff got the feeling that Michael’s advisor had recommended the VP class to fulfil the humanities grad requirement the university had attached to every degree (“We need more well-rounded graduates” was the official reasoning behind the call, but really it was because without gen ed requirements the English department would have collapsed in on itself.)

****

Typically CS majors heard phrases like “video production” and “creative design” and thought it translated into “slackoff class.” It was some of the most fun Geoff had every year watching them get proven wrong.

****

He got about five alt major kids a semester, and more often than not most of them had dropped by the midterm. Michael had been one of the few to stick it out, but his intolerance for the class was almost laughable. Almost, but not quite.Because even though Michael spent 99% of the time that Geoff was in lecture browsing Reddit, he still managed to crank out some of the best video in the class.

****

Yeah, their first assignment had been to make a thirty second advertisement for a fictional company, and sure Geoff really hadn’t been expecting a My Little Pony themed hair salon to be what Michael settled on, but damn if that stop motion hadn’t been some of the most innovative shit Geoff had seen in years. Geoff wished he could fail Michael on his smarmy attitude alone, but he couldn’t, because, fuck, the kid could create.

****

So, he’d spent all semester putting up with the dynamic duo (he wouldn’t have called them the dipshit duo but his coordinating professor didn’t take too kindly to him straight up insulting students) and now it was time for payback.

****

Geoff took the stairs up to the third floor of the JHJ building and pressed past several junior production students before making it to his office door. He slid his key into the lock, unlocked the door, and locked it behind him in three seconds flat.

****

Settling into his desk chair, he couldn’t help but smile.

**  
**Gavin and Michael had managed to get on every nerve Geoff had left, but the explosion that was sure to happen when he let them loose on each other, well, that was going to make it all worth it.


	2. Chapter 2

Michael was going to kill Professor Fussell. He was. Fussell was the one who had told him video production was going to be an easy A. Fussell was the reason he had spent three times as many hours working on this goddamn GenEd class as on any of his other classes. Fussell was why he was sitting on the fucking fourth floor of the library waiting for the one kid in their class that couldn’t seem to ever shut up to meet him to discuss just how they were going to do their final project.

It was all Fussell’s fault. QED Fussell had to die. End of.

“Just dicking around with video cameras all day.” That was what he had said during Michael’s advising meeting. “Just dicking around.” He’d used those words. An associate professor had said “dicking around.” How was Michael supposed to not take him at that?

But Fussell had been so wrong. More wrong than the people who thought Duke Nukem Forever was going to be better than the original. More wrong than people who thought Squirtle was a better starter than Charmander (seriously how many times had Ray been dropped as a child for him to believe that). He had just been really fucking wrong, okay.

Of course, he couldn’t blame it all on his advisor, no Geoff could take part of the blame, too.

He knew the TA had it out for him from the moment he stepped into the lecture hall. Once a teacher found out that you would only consider stepping into their Holy Hall of the Liberal Arts (he always saw it in his head all capitalized like that) for a GenEd class, well, you could pretty much kiss any chance of having the TA on your side goodbye.

Still, he’d managed to pull some shit out of his ass and churn out some pretty good finished products, and as a result Geoff had given him grades that were way better than anything he’d gotten on his last four coding assignments for his CS classes. Sure, he had some good ideas and he could throw a video together, but the work that it took to act like he wasn’t taking it seriously, that had been bullshit.

Geoff would have to die too. He’d come after Fussell.

Michael tapped his pencil against the table his partner had agreed to meet him at and checked his watch one more time.

 _Late. Ten minutes late, in fact._ Michael had a hard and fast rule that he never waited for anyone for more than fifteen minutes, and he wasn’t about to make an exception just because his entire final grade (a grade that made up forty percent of the semester coursework) depended on it.

 _He’s probably still on London time._ Michael thought, bitterly.

Was Gavin from London?

Gavin, he thought that was his partner’s name. He thumbed through his backpack and yanked out the final project sheet. Flipping it over, he ran his finger across the name printed next to his own.

 _Gavin Free_. What kind of a last name was Free? It wasn’t a last name. It was an adjective.

He checked his watch again, three minutes.

Michael rolled his eyes and opened up a Chrome window on his laptop. He tabbed up Facebook and before he could stop himself he had typed “Gavin Free” into the search bar.

_**Gavin Free. Three Mutual Friends.** _

He clicked Gavin’s name.

Dear God.

He’d been paired with a twelve year old.

Okay, maybe twelve was a little dramatic, but seriously? Michael didn’t look quite of age yet himself but, damn, at least he didn’t look like he was only on his third week of eighth grade.

Michael tried to click through Gavin’s profile pictures, just to see if Gavin was really, seriously that young looking, but was hit with a privacy filter.

He tried to remember what Gavin looked like from class. Michael knew that he sat near the front, and he could definitely pick his voice out of a crowd thanks to the fact that a class didn’t go back without Gavin piping up at least six or seven times, but all he could remember about his partner was what the back of his head looked like.

Michael scrolled through his likes (couldn’t help but notice the disturbing lack of any kind of American television other than Family Guy) and closed out of the page before he got caught and had to explain to his new partner why he had felt the need to internet stalk him.

He looked at his watch again. It was seventeen after. Dammit. He’d broken his own rule.

He snapped his computer closed and tucked it under his arm before swinging his backpack over his left shoulder.

No sweat off his back. If Gavin wanted to not show up for meetings, then Gavin could come up with a concept by himself for all Michael cared.

He was halfway down the first flight of stairs when he had the notion that perhaps letting the most unbearable person in his class plan the entirety of his final project might not be the best idea he’d ever had. He stopped, one foot on the landing between the third and four floor and one at the top of the next set of stairs.

_Fuck._

\---

Gavin didn’t show up for another ten minutes.

“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! I tried to catch Professor Ramsey in his office before I met you because he wasn’t answering my e-mails and I wanted to make sure that I had everything straight before we started but then his door was locked and I saw a light on but he wasn’t answering the door and I thought maybe he couldn’t hear me and if I just knocked a little harder he might answer but then--”

“You know he’s not a professor, right?”

“What?”

“Geoff. He’s not a professor. He doesn’t even have his PhD. He told us that on the first day. You know, the day when you asked whether or not there would be a test on the course objectives outlined in the syllabus. That day.”

Gavin blinked at Michael. “Bit odd that you remember that.”

Michael guffawed. “What’s odd is that you showed up thirty minutes late to a final project meeting that we planned two hours ago.”

“I’m only twenty five minutes late.”

“You’re late.”

“I’ll give you that.”

Michael stared at his partner, annoyed. Okay, so, it turned out that Gavin didn’t look twelve. The bit of stubble that he had growing across his (truly offensive) jawline managed to age him up a bit. In fact, he probably looked older than Michael. For some reason that made him more mad than the fact that Gavin was twenty five minutes late.

“Anyway,” Michael broke the silence between them, “is there any way we can hurry this along? I told my roommate that I’d be back by five so we could co-op some Dead Space.”

“The new one?”

“That’d be it.”

“You know it’s way better on single.”

“Of course I know that, but he’s fucking obsessive about his gamerscore and if he doesn’t get the co-op achievements he’s going to have a damn conniption.”

“Hm.”

Michael could punch Gavin right in the face.

“So do you have any ideas or?”

Gavin grinned and turned to ruffle through his bag (more of a man purse, really) and slid out a MacBook. “I’ve actually got a couple storylines already planned out I’ve covered most of the major genres: action, adventure, romance, horror, so you’ll have your pick of the lot I was thinking of something a little more involved because I know Professor Ramsey, I mean, Geoff likes it when things are really involved at least that’s what I’ve heard from some upper level VP students...”

Michael squeezed the bridge of his nose. It was official: Gavin spoke in run-on sentences. This was going to be a long final few weeks.


End file.
